Giving Back

Giving Back: Buy the Camo and Lone Survivor Foundation Story

At Buy the Camo we place high importance on giving back to our community, which is why we have recently teamed up with ​​Lone Survivor Foundation.

​This charity works with injured service members and their families to give them health, wellness, and therapeutic support. Like the Lone Survivor Foundation, we believe a person’s injury cannot always be seen. A veteran returning to normal life is expected to ​camouflage his or her injuries in front of others especially injuries that you can’t see.These injuries revolve around post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, depression, drug and alcohol misuse, chronic pain, and sexual trauma. We want to honour our servicemen and servicewomen and drive down these scary statistics:

There are over 2.7 million American Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (source​)

According to the nonprofit and nonpartisan organization RAND, 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have PTSD and/or Depression.Other studies put PTSD statistics up to 31% within a year after deployment (​source).

PTSD is the third most prevalent psychiatric diagnosis among veterans (​source​)

PTSD, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and traumatic brain injury are invisible to the world, but are so prevalent in the life of the veteran that more than 1 veterans commits suicide every sixty-five minutes (​source). While there is no cure, there are ways veterans and veterans’ families can cope.

Buy the Camo will donate 1% of monthly proceeds to Lone Survivor Foundation, because no one should be forced to camouflage themselves behind a smile when they’re suffering.

Lone Survivor Foundation History

Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor, the 2007 #1 New York Times best-selling book, tells the harrowing, emotionally raw account and motivational story of his survival and the deaths of his comrades-in-arms in Operation Redwing, a mission to gather intelligence on Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. Marcus’ NEVER QUIT attitude was key to his survival and his recovery at home.

After surviving his operations in Afghanistan, Marcus returned home to his ranch in Texas, the center of his post- combat recovery and restoration. On the ranch, Marcus had time to recover, to think, and to feel the love and support of close friends and family as he healed his wounds. Based upon first hand experiences of what is needed to provide holistic treatment beyond standard government programs, while honoring his lost comrades from Operation Redwing, Marcus established the Lone Survivor Foundation in 2010.